Communal violence signals disregard for law

Beyond the binaries of Hindu versus Muslim, there is a very simple way of looking at what appears to be an orgy of majoritarian chest-thumping that we have witnessed in India during this inordinately hot April. There has been a complete breakdown of law and order in multiple states during the Ram Navami season. There is nothing complicated about understanding that this was a nation that was birthed in the midst of a bloody Partition that involved riots, mayhem and an exodus. A couple of years after that, we gave ourselves a magnificent Constitution, the envy of other struggling post-colonial nations. There were always differences that had to be reduced and not exacerbated.

In Khargone in BJP-ruled MP, homes and shops of Muslims suspected of stone-pelting were demolished without the due process of law. Similarly, just days after the clash in Delhi, the BJP-run municipal corporation issued a notice to demolish properties in Jahangirpuri under an anti-encroachment drive. But the SC has ordered status quo on the drive.

From the administrative perspective, therefore, we had very clear policing protocols in place. Many districts in India where mixed populations lived were considered sensitive and permissions required to move religious processions through certain neighbourhoods and/or streets. The idea was to manage differences and not inflame passions.

What we have been witnessing lately is the reverse happening. It’s the old Partition-era template, brilliantly captured in the short stories of Saadat Hasan Manto, now at play again in India of 2022. Partition tales from undivided India involved processions passing and insulting other faiths, they told of the desecration of places of worship of all religions, be it temples, mosques or gurdwaras. There were accounts of pigs being thrown inside mosques and carcass of cows outside temples. It was horrific and we would have hoped that was behind us. True, we have known brutal mega-riots in independent India after events such as a demolition or an assassination. But what we are seeing today is sustained provocation.

Currently, insults are being thrown at India’s largest minority with alarming frequency: be it from the so-called but rather unholy dharma sansads (faith congregations), where calls for the extermination of an entire people and raping of women have been made, and in the extreme lumpen nature of some of the Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanti processions where participants can be seen brandishing weapons and heard insulting Islam and Muslims. Some individuals among the Muslim population, currently fasting in the month of Ramzan, have begun to retaliate with stone-throwing.

We are standing on the edge of a dangerous precipice.

Tension and clashes have taken place this month in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Uttarakhand and Delhi. From Haryana also came reports and visuals on April 16 — Hanuman Jayanti — of VHP/Bajrang Dal workers allegedly digging up a mazaar (Sufi grave) and installing a Hanuman idol. The police, according to media reports, were looking into the incident.

Beyond the Hindi belt and Gujarat, BJP-ruled Karnataka — where elections are due in just a year from now — is in a state of perpetual polarisation, be it over hijab, halal or just rank gutter-level communal profiling such as excluding Muslim vendors from certain sites or jobs. Hubballi in north Karnataka was again simmering on April 18 over an objectionable social media post, leading to many arrests and imposition of Section 144. These little conflagrations are flaring up at so many sites across India that we must conclude it is part of a deliberate design.

In the Jahangirpuri area of Delhi, where clashes broke out on Hanuman Jayanti (April 16), the police have now stated that the third procession that resulted in the communal flare-up did not have the requisite permission (unlike two similar processions that passed earlier). More arrests have been from the minority community while the questioning of a VHP member resulted in the organisation threatening to “launch a battle against Delhi Police”. After first naming “organisers” from the VHP and Bajrang Dal, Delhi Police has withdrawn its statement and no Hindutva organisation is likely to be named. It’s now a familiar pattern.

After all, Delhi had vicious riots just two years ago in the north-east part of the city, when entire neighbourhoods were blown up and 53 people lost their lives, two-thirds of whom were from the minority community. Then again, members of the BJP who made threats and stoked the flames got away unscathed, while many from the minority community continue to be behind bars. In those riots, lives and homes were lost as mobs were allowed to regroup and return for strikes in specific localities. The small mercy in the 2022 Delhi clash is that the situation has not been allowed to escalate.

A worrying precedent has also been set in a rather perverse and selective application of the so-called “bulldozer policy”, first applied in BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh, overwhelmingly against the minorities. In Khargone in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh, homes and shops of Muslims who were suspected of stone-pelting were demolished without the due process of law (according to media reports, 16 homes and 29 shops, mostly owned by Muslims, were reduced to rubble without any warning by the district administration). Similarly, just days after the clash in Delhi, the BJP-run municipal corporation issued a notice to demolish properties in Jahangirpuri under an anti-encroachment drive. But the Supreme Court has ordered a status quo on the demolition drive by the North Delhi MC.

In a short story set in pre-Partition Amritsar, translated into English and titled ‘The Assignment’, Manto begins with this description: “Beginning with isolated incidents of stabbing, it had now developed into full-scale communal violence. Even home-made bombs were being used. But the general view in Amritsar was that the riots could not last long. They were seen as no more than a manifestation of temporarily inflamed political passions which were bound to cool down before long.” Naturally, the story does not end well, even as it takes us to a brutal twist in the end.

Hopefully, we can pull back. If we don’t, we will only diminish ourselves, and beyond communities migrating out of mixed neighbourhoods and into ghettoes, there could also be a flight of capital outside a country that seems trapped in permanent unrest.